I'm now as free as the breeze — with roughly the same income.

Perret’s line is a wry one-liner about the trade-off between personal freedom and financial security. Declaring himself “as free as the breeze” evokes an ideal of unencumbered movement—no boss, no schedule, no obligations. The punchline (“with roughly the same income”) undercuts that romantic image by implying that such freedom may come with little or no pay, or that his previous situation was already financially meager. The humor depends on self-deprecation and the deflation of lofty rhetoric, a hallmark of professional joke-writing: it acknowledges the appeal of independence while candidly admitting its economic cost.